CHAPTER ONE #2
“Because your father had no admiration for what he deemed useless accomplishments, and he always supported you in your desire to be outside with him, learning how to run the estate, as if you had been the son he was denied.” Laura’s lips parted at the bitter note she detected behind the bald explanation, but her mother went on without pause in a voice full of uncharacteristic emotion.
“Of course you were not horrid, my love. There wasn’t an ounce of harm in you; you were forever rescuing wounded or abandoned animals and birds and taking care of them.
Such activities interested you more than music lessons or sewing, and you do have a wilful side to your nature.
My views could never prevail when your father supported your notions, though I did win a battle with him once.
It was over your name — he wanted to call you Agatha after his grandmother. ”
“Thank goodness you prevailed that time, Mama!” Laura gave a small shudder at the thought of being called Aggie.
Mrs. Marsh’s eyes were shadowed. “It was the first and only victory of my marriage,” she said softly, returning her gaze to the piece of embroidery in her lap.
The lengthening silence was punctuated by a long hiss as a log sputtered in the fireplace.
Laura’s eyes were fixed on her mother’s graceful white hands setting tiny perfect stitches while her mind seethed with unasked questions.
“I … I don’t believe I have ever heard you speak of your marriage before,” she said tentatively.
“No,” her mother agreed.
When nothing more was forthcoming, Laura ventured, “It seemed to me that you and Papa were always rather … formal and … and polite in the manner in which you spoke to each other. I never really noticed this until I stayed with the Milford family for a sennight once to keep Mary company when she could not walk on her sprained ankle. Mary’s parents often laughed and joked together.
On one occasion I heard them argue about something for several heated minutes, and then they laughed about that.
I cannot recall you and Papa ever laughing together — or arguing, for that matter. ”
Mrs. Marsh’s hands were crushing the forgotten embroidery now, and real distress showed in her blue-green eyes.
“Pray believe I did try — I was determined that your childhood should not be unhappy because of me. I tried to keep any disagreements or coldness between your father and me away from you so it would not shadow your life, but there was so little I could do. The situation was what it was. And it was all my fault.” Her voice trailed off and one hand opened in an unconsciously pleading gesture, but her eyes were absent, gazing into the past.
Laura rushed into the breach, anxious to ease her parent’s burden.
“My childhood was certainly not unhappy, Mama. It was not until I was older and had observed some other people’s lives that I began to suspect that you were unhappy.
Somehow I could never ask you about this.
It seemed an invasion of your privacy. Whenever I came into a room you immediately put on an air of cheerfulness, even though I might have glimpsed a look of melancholy an instant before you noticed me.
And Papa was so cold and … forbidding that I could not ask him anything either. ”
“But he was not cold with you, surely — at least not before the unfortunate situation with Chester Hamilton? You two spent so much time together roaming about the estate that I supposed you to be the best of companions.” Mrs. Marsh’s voice and eyes begged for reassurance, but now that a lifelong pattern of reticence had been unexpectedly shattered, Laura was not about to retreat.
Her parents’ inner lives had always been a closed book to her; now the time had come for enlightenment.
“If you read our close association as evidence that Papa regarded me with true affection, then you have been deceiving yourself all these years, Mama,” she said bluntly.
“I knew you loved me and I could always go to you for comfort, but all my life the best I could hope for from Papa was to gain his approval on those occasions when I had performed some difficult task to his satisfaction, or selected the correct course of action when he quizzed me about policies on the farm. I recall one occasion when I cut my leg with a scythe and he carried me back to the house. I thought I had seen real concern in his face at first, but then he berated me all the way home, saying the accident was my own fault, which of course it was. And after I refused to marry Chester Hamilton when I was seventeen, he made it clear that he positively disliked me.”
“No, dearest, not dislike,” her mother protested. “It was just that he had his heart set on an alliance with the Hamilton family in the hope that the two properties might be combined one day. Chester is the only son —”
“And a complete blockhead, as well as being a cruel bully, whom Papa well knew I had detested since childhood,” Laura retorted.
Her features softened at the sight of tears shimmering in her mother’s eyes, but her next words, though quiet, were unrelenting.
“Yes, Mama, dislike. You must have been aware that Papa could scarcely bring himself to say a civil word to me in the last year and a half of his life. He refused to let me visit my godmother in London during the season, and made me understand that if I would not have Chester Hamilton I would remain a spinster forever. He wanted to punish me for refusing to knuckle under to his will.”
“No, Laura, not you! He wanted to punish me, because I would not support him in urging you into that distasteful marriage. If he was unkind to you it was always to punish me. Everything is my fault! It was my wretched weakness in the first place that was behind everything. I never had your strength or resolution, dearest. I could not stand firm against my father, and look what has come of it!” Mrs. Marsh put her hands over her face and began to weep in earnest.
Laura leapt to her feet and crossed to her parent, placing her strong young arms about the shaking shoulders and murmuring soothing noises as one would to an inconsolable child.
While the storm lasted, shock faded and suspicions formed and faded in her mind, finally coalescing into conjecture.
When her mother had dried her eyes and blown her nose, muttering incoherent little apologies for breaking down, Laura said, “Mama, do I apprehend that your were coerced into marrying my father by your father?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Marsh admitted in a voice that still contained sobbing breaths, “but it was even worse that that.”
“In what way worse?”
“Well, arranged marriages where the parties have no initial affection or regard for each other have been known to prosper in time, but in this case I was in love with another man, whom my father had repulsed. I told your father this, thinking that he would not wish to wed me under such unpromising circumstances, but he would not rescind his offer, and so we were married.”
“Infamous!” Laura declared, then added involuntarily, “Poor Papa. He must have loved you desperately.”
Mrs. Marsh leaned forward and gripped her daughter’s hand so strongly that Laura’s eyes flew to her face.
Her voice passionate, she protested, “If that had been the case, had he really loved me, I must have come to care in time — my heart would have been touched by his sincerity and his pain — but it was clear that he was only infatuated with my face, because when I could not respond as he desired, he soon grew cold and increasingly bitter. He was sadly chagrined when you were not a son. In the next three years I had two more confinements, two stillborn boys —”
“I never knew about this!”
“No, you were just a baby yourself, and we never spoke of it later. Your father blamed me openly for my failure to produce a son. Looking back, I feel that was the death knell for any hope of forging a viable marriage bond. We lived together as unforgiving strangers from that point.”
“All those years — how unutterably sad, but at least you did not allow your unhappiness to embitter you, Mama. You’ve been a wonderful mother and a kind mistress and neighbour despite your basic unhappiness, while Papa … Papa seemed to alienate all who would be his friends.”
“Perhaps I tried harder because I had more to atone for. I always knew the original failure was mine,” Mrs. Marsh said, her face reflecting sadness and regret. “Do not judge your father too harshly, my love.”
“I must judge him as I found him, Mama. Though I was his child and tried to please him most of my life, he was unable to love me, and he would have condemned me to a loveless marriage for the sake of eventually enlarging the property, which I find doubly heinous given the circumstances of his own situation. What was the name of the man you loved, Mama? Was he totally ineligible? What became of him?”
Mrs. Marsh blinked at her daughter’s abrupt change of subject, and it was a moment before she replied, “His name was Stephen Wright. His birth was unexceptionable, but his prospects were modest; my father did not consider his estate high enough to aspire to the hand of a baronet’s daughter.
Your grandfather Marsh possessed large estates in Sussex at the time, so your father was decidedly the better catch, but my father was burned in the end.
He did not know that Mr. Marsh, who was addicted to gaming, was on the brink of losing everything except this farm, which he had made over to his son.
We were scarcely married a year when my father-in-law died of a massive stroke and the real situation became known.
That contributed to your father’s woes just about the time you were born. ”